


Convalescence

by Arcah



Series: Aura Kingdom Short Stories [3]
Category: Aura Kingdom (Video Game)
Genre: Caretaking, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Master/Pet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 03:28:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12808611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcah/pseuds/Arcah
Summary: Short Story following up on Cerberus and Hades -About Loyalty-Hades has difficulty dealing with some things, like happy dogs, whiny dogs, hurt dogs, feelings and displaying them appropriately.The envoy of Gaia decides to help.





	Convalescence

"Not that I don't appreciate the company-" The Envoy of Gaia gazed skeptically to his guest, who got tea served to him by a quiet Serif.  
"-but why the hell are you here?" The envoy sat cross legged in his massive chair, one he had chosen specifically for comfort. An ancient tome rested on his lap, its pages restrained by magical shackles.  
The 'esteemed guest' took the offered tea and sampled it, only to scrounge up his face a moment.  
"No, we don't have wine." The Envoy spoke as he was reading an incantation on a separate piece of paper. Then looked up. Straight into blue eyes.

"You have a palace of your own. Why have you been camping out here, Hades?"

The Lord of the underworld ignored the -in his eyes- brash accusation that he somehow couldn't handle a situation back at his cold home. Quietly, he sipped more tea. 

The envoy's brow sprung in a wrinkle. 

Hades remained silent.

The Envoy kept his gaze locked on the eidolon, who seemed to have grown an oddly rapid love for the new beverage called tea. And the fire in the hearth. Actually anything seemed to be facinating other then the Envoy to whom the house he was in belonged to. 

"..It's him, isn't it??" The Envoy smirked amused when he saw the lord of the underworld so carefully 'stoic'.  
"So you left poor Hermes to help him up his feet? After all he has done for you?" A sting of cold was jabbed at the eidolon sitting across of the envoy. The lord of the underworld looked up.  
"Pathetic." The Envoy snapped his tome shut so loud it seemed to deafen the room. Carefully he re-engaged the seal on its cover, and laid it to the side. "After everything he endured, this is how you treat him?" The envoy stood up. 

Hades's look hardened, and he did not rise to meet the envoy eye to eye. "Careful, Envoy. For you do not know what you speak of." The hard ice summoned in his eyes was intimidating. It would freeze ordinary men and women mid-sentence. But the envoy had lived and died with this being. 

"He suffered, Hades. On your behalf. For your sake. And you are abandoning him here."

"He has due care. He needs me not to speed his recovery" Hades answered, cold and analytical. In general, he liked this envoy, perhaps slightly more than those who had come before him, but this aspect he thoroughly hated. This man was bull-headed. In a refined way. It grated on him.

"Bullshit." The envoy met his gaze head-on. "I know what this is, and I know that reason is utter bullshit. He deserves more from you"

Now, the lord of the underworld stood. "MIND YOU PLACE! Mortal."

The envoy did not budge, even when inside a part of him quaked. "Calling me a mortal would not entirely be accurate." He spoke with his gaze and poise guarded. "For I am an envoy of Gaia."

"I can unmake you. Mortal or not. You should be as wise as to fear that."

"Does it run that deep, Hades?" The envoy walked in a slow circle around the lord of the underworld. "That you threaten me when I prod too close to your weakness?" A bluff played, he forced a smirk over his lips. That word, 'weakness' was a very dangerous word to use in reference to Hades.  
But his bluff did not have the effect the envoy had hoped on, instead he saw the distance realize in Hades's eyes. Instead of anger, he had incited something far more dangerous. Yet, there was no way but forward..

Hades turned his back on the envoy and left the place that was his home. Meanwhile the envoy's hand trembled as he held himself standing on the chair he preferred. If he moved now his legs did not guarantee they would hold him.  
A trembling breath left him. It had been only days since Cerberus had been rescued from Delfonia's capture. He had seen their reunion with his own eyes. The genuine concern in Hades's eyes. The relief. The embrace.  
Where had all that gone to? Why was Hades avoiding acknowledging the feelings he so obviously had? What did he fear?

Evening came, and the envoy still found himself in thought, on the precipice of going out to find the Lord of the underworld. After all, he hadn't shifted dimensions with his onyx throne. He had to be near, somewhere. He hoped.  
But Hades found him first. In the Sky Tower. A silent reunion. Hades was never a man for words. But definitely seemed off. Yet the earlier rage, ...pain?,.. seemed to have gone. It was a little solace for the envoy's nerves. 

"Forgive my outburst. Envoy" The lord of the underworld spoke short, and without eye contact. The words on themselves already a miracle. 

"..I seem to have hit a sensitive spot" The envoy spoke, apologetically. He sighed deep, a move the eidolon mimicked. "Come with me." Hades looked at him the first time, brief. His eyes spoke of ...ancient grief.

The eidolon led the envoy through a path of dimensions. Unusual, and dangerous both in equal aspects. "You have attained a strong enough mastery of the magic-arts to make this risk of taking you here acceptable. But whatever happens, you need to stay in my vicinity." Hades spoke as they arrived in a place where up was down and down was up and everything was just... wrong. For a moment the envoy stood still, just to get his bearings. The lord of the underworld waited for him. Three incantations of spells later, the envoy could move his limbs properly and his senses worked again. For the most part. Hades led him on along what seemed to be a field. "The world here is and never was suited to be visited by a living human. Your senses aren't meant to understand this. The spells you used were made by ancient mages who aspired to visit here." A slight tone of disdain filled their mention. "Their spells are a crude but inaccurate solution."  
The envoy grinned listless. "You have to give them points for trying." But as usual that was met with silence from the eidolon leading him.  
The fields gave away for forests(?) and hills. Until finally the envoy saw a head-ache inducing warble of images trying to interpret the uninterpretal realm they were in.  
"Gravestones?" He asked with a groan and a hand over his temple.  
Hades gazed at the envoy and lifted a brow. "Curious analogy. But sufficient." He turned back to the.. things. thing. grave-stone.

"It is a memory." Hades's tone became mournful. "Of a person? Or an event?" The envoy asked.  
"Both." Hades answered. "These are one and the same" he sighed as if teaching a 12-year old. "This is another envoy. She was the first envoy to ever call upon me." His tone went nostalgic.  
"The first?" The envoy dropped that query. "She was someone special?" A question that didn't need asking. He realized after. No answer came. "I accompanied her across Azuria with her missions. I was interested in this novelty, envoys. She was not the first ever, I had heard of others before, but the first to find me, and call upon me. I accepted her and fought with her. She was.. vibrant." His eyes roamed the field of memories. "Positive. Naive and held a lot of goodness in her." He saught the envoy's gaze now, who listened quietly.  
"When the war came, it changed her. I saw it break her. And her family." Something seemed to pain him deeply. "When her brother died, she blamed the demons who put a sword through his chest instead of me."  
"When her mother died, she blamed the war, no medicine had been left to save her."  
"When her father died, she still refused to blame me. To find someone so understanding, a mortal.." His gaze was lost, and his expression unguarded, showing his sadness.  
"..she was the first to understand I do not seek out and kill people. She was the first mortal to understand I preserve a balance between life and death, and guard the underworld."  
The envoy listened, peering into the mass of images to spy a young girls face between the many gravestones.  
"Until it was her time to go."  
The envoy looked up to the eidolon. "How? Envoys do not die easily."  
"Ambush. She died protecting civilians, stabbed by an ancient evil." Sadness permiated his voice like rain soaked wool. "When I went to collect her soul, she found the strength to wake, and speak to me.  
And begged me to release her." His fingers minutely cramped together. 

"And you thought she understood." The envoy quietly remarked. The silence was his answer. "So that is why.. you are protecting yourself, afraid to be hurt like that again. Down where you cannot simply heal." The envoy spoke, but carefully kept his voice free from judgment. "You need the distance to fulfil your task in maintaining the balance between life and death."  
Blue eyes met the violet ones of the envoy, containing in that stare was a plea for understanding. Unvoiced but not unspoken.  
The envoy answered it with a quiet nod. "I will do anything and everything I can not to end up dead, well, permanently dead." He spoke and held his eye contact. "But when it is my time. I will accept your guidance, Hades."  
No verbal response came from the Eidolon, but the lord of the underworld nodded back in kind after a short pause. This envoy, he grated on his nerves more often than not.. but this, this was the reason he had taken a liking to him.  
"Thank you" The lord of the underworld spoke, to the envoy's surprise. After which the envoy smiled. Obscured by his mask, Hades was still able to tell due to the eyes. 

"Having that cleared." The envoy spoke gentle. "Respectfully, I am of opinion you should pay heed to one human philosophy." Hades lifted a brow.  
"I understand your approach with me, and other mortals. But Cerberus, and Hermes. They are no mortals." The violet eyes of the envoy held the straight blue of Hades.  
"Furthermore, they are under your care, and eidolons, dedicated to balancing the world and preserving it. They do not join in the cycle of life."  
Hades averted his gaze, unbeknownst to the envoy, to the direction of his palace.  
"Cerberus made an almost ultimate sacrifice for you. And I know, and have seen how much you appreciate it. He deserves to see it too." Hades sighed with closed eyes. Uncomfortable rather then defensive.  
"I know showing affection, or even only emotion is hard. Especially with what you expirienced. But it is better to try and fail, then to have never tried at all. Hades, no one is more loyal to you then Cerberus and Hermes." The envoy explained. "Even if you don't get it right right away, they will never leave your side." The envoy gestured softly.  
The lord of the underworld exhaled again, long and definite in what was his closest analogue to "Alright, I will attempt it."  
The envoy smiled. "And whilst we're at it, I never got to see your palace."

Hades gazed back blankly at that. "You are not even meant to."  
"So?"  
"...Follow" The eidolon sighed and led him through a warping portal that surely took 40% of all of the envoy's magical endurance to survive. To enter into the massive hall that led to the lord of the underworld's throne room. The eidolon led the way and called;  
"CERBERUS!"  
It took the wounded loyal hound less than a minute to show up. "Master you are home!" He grinned with both fangs on display and a wagging tail.  
"You command an ill man to come to you? Really?" The envoy held his forehead. "How are you?" he asked the hound.  
"Healing! My ear still needs to grow back but the hole in my spine has closed, so Hermes said!" The lady mentioned stood peering around a corner. "Masterrr" She waved. Hades gazed to her flatly and closed his eyes, why did he have two troublemakers? He turned around to take place on his throne.  
"But look master I-" The envoy saw the hound of Hades's knee give out and flop sideways, and quickly incanted a spell of thorn vines to break the hounds fall and keep his leg from snapping off, only- it hadn't been necessary. A cold hand had grabbed Cerberus by the scruff of his neck and had kept him from falling. "Damned hound" The lord of the underworld spoke as he held him. "Why did you come running when you can barely stand!?" He pulled him along and sat him down. All the while Cerberus's eyes were on his master in shock. His tail still.  
"Because you called me-"  
Hades seemed to struggle with himself, especially with the glare he was getting from the envoy.  
He sighed with defeat and sat down on his throne, holding his head. "I need my wine." He groaned. "Aye aye master." Hermes ran off with her semi-awake face. Hermes and kitchens were a disaster however. The envoy knew this as she had caused his house to almost burn down on several occasions, to the annoyance of the Navea city fire brigade. Why did Won insist on giving cooking lessons anyway? "I'll.. go help." The envoy sighed and gazed to Hades with a 'Be nice' look, followed by a 'don't be afraid to show them' one before disappearing through the door. Pots were already flying.  
Then Hades noticed Cerberus was still staring at him. And probably had been all this time.  
How was he to deal with this..? How? He needed to find an answer to that..the envoy had been right, Cerberus deserved as much as a little reward for his sacrifice. 

"Look, over there" He spoke stoically, and as his faithful hound looked to see, he pulled his head to rest over his lap. His cold hand weighting down on his hound's still mangled ear. Cerberus was so suprised he didn't dare to move.  
Great.. I am creeping him out. Hades face-palmed and tried to find a way to take away the awkwardness. But the answer came from Cerberus himself.  
He relaxed. He trusted Hades, more than anything else. And to see this trust displayed so, touched Hades in turn.. 

When the envoy and Hermes returned with a long overdue glass of wine. They found the lord of the underworld with his hound over his lap, his cold hands nurturing his wounds, infusing them with energy to help them heal. And Cerberus, he held the happiest look the envoy ever recalled seeing. And Hades? Well, if anything, he looked.. content. The envoy smiled, a true and warm one, as rare as they came for the envoy of Gaia.  
"I think my work is done here" He gave a slow, smiling nod to Hades. Who gave a minute nod in return. "Prolonged exposure is not good for you." He caught himself a moment.  
"Thank you, Envoy." Ice blue eyes met his. "For your assistance, and understanding." Hades turned his attention to Hermes. "Please open up a portal and escort the envoy back to Azuria."

And with that the envoy stood back in his living room again. And for a moment, he just, thought. "No issue like this is fixed overnight. But I hope this helps him." He smirked, then turned back to his tomes and grimoires.

**Author's Note:**

> An addition to the series, because these days I find myself loving writing more an more!  
> Again, all critique is welcome, I am a novice writer in need of it.


End file.
